Republicans really must have believed they had this whole gay issue settled once and for all—then along come voters, and prominent Republicans, showing support for gay rights and even coming out. That’s left some hard-line religiously conservative Republicans confused and angry.
Witness the vehemence of such conservatives as WorldNetDaily founder Joseph Farah who took on Christopher Barron, the co-founder and chairman of the gay Republican group GOProud, at the Take Back America conference over the weekend in Miami. (You’ll remember, this is the conference Ann Coulter was disinvited from because she agreed to speak at GoProud’s “Homocon” event.)
Barron argued that gay people can be true conservatives, listing his organization’s support for conservative causes like “tax cuts, repealing health-care reform, social-security reform, and a neo-conservative defense for the Global War on Terror.” To Barron, one’s sexual orientation has nothing to do with whether one can be conservative or not.
Farah disagreed—on a religious basis:
“There is no middle ground – either you believe the Bible or you don’t,” he said. “I don’t care if you are conservative on 999 issues out of 1,000 – if you take the position that men can marry men, or women can marry women, you’re not a conservative. […] The conservative movement has been infiltrated by homosexual activists like Christopher Barron.”
Which is not entirely true—the “conservative movement” is filled with gays and lesbians like Ken Mehlman, who led the Republican National Committee, and author and radio host Tammy Bruce. Gay and lesbian people, closeted or not, have long been a part of the “conservative movement.” What Farah does not like is that right now, these people are speaking up. They are no longer being silent about who they are – not just as conservatives, but as human beings.
I’ll be none of them expected to be applauded for coming out and proclaiming that their rights as gays and lesbians are just as important as small government and tax cuts, but the vehemence of the remnant of radical anti-gay forces in the Republican party can be a bit staggering. For instance, the Montana Republican Party in June “adopted an official platform that keeps a long-held position in support of making homosexual acts illegal, a policy adopted after the Montana Supreme Court struck down such laws in 1997.”
Reaction to such backward thinking is strong even in Montana:
“I looked at that and said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’” state Sen. John Brueggeman, R-Polson, said last week. “Should it get taken out? Absolutely. Does anybody think we should be arresting homosexual people? If you take that stand, you really probably shouldn’t be in the Republican Party.”
For the Republicans, Barron and Mehlman are the wave of the future—conservatives who are also gay, and not concerned with what the religious right has to say about it. Which could make one wonder what party the religious right will need to find next if the Republicans finally reject their Bible-thumping as an excuse to discriminate against other Republicans? The tea party faces the same split.
Many have speculated on the death of the religious right—and it always seems to survive predictions of its demise—but a new Associated Press poll released this week echoes an earlier CNN poll showing majority support for same-sex marriage (52 percent to 46 percent). The poll also shows 58 percent say gays and lesbians should “be entitled to the same government benefits as married couples of the opposite sex.” Only 38 percent opposed.
It’s instructive to note that of the 1,007 adults interviewed for the poll last month 74 percent professed to be religious—36 percent of them “born-again Evangelicals.”
The religious right has been counted out of the political landscape before and they have roared back stronger than ever in the past, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see them rally again in the future. But, for now, the tide of public opinion on this issue is turning on them quite strongly—and all they can think to do is yell louder about what they believe the Bible says.
